Great news! Ethiopian is introducing Brussels in Belgium, Libreville in Gabon, Juba in Sudan, AND Dakar, Sénégal taking effect in the summer. Also many increases in service including Amsterdam, Stockholm, London Gatwick, Johannesburg, Mumbai, Delhi, Beijing, Khartoum, Cairo, Lusaka!

Quoting AIR MALTA (Reply 2):Is there a merket to Senegal?? Well if there is a market there, there should be one in Tunis...

Of course there is a market to Senegal. Look over the fast growing expension of Air Senegal International to West Africa and in a near future to Central Africa.

Also, look at the 120% increase in one year of Royal Air Maroc traffic to Africa.

And there is definitively a huge demand between East and West Africa but there is still a lack of offer (just Kenya Airways and Ethiopian), in particular since the disappearance of Air Afrique, Cameroon Airlines and Air Gabon.

More and more people want to connect to Middle-East / Asia through Nairobi or Addis Abeba.

Doubt it, especially in the near future. There is not much Spain-Ethiopia trade going on, and Spain mostly has ties to Northern Africa countries... Ethiopian used to fly to Madrid in the 60s or 70s however, which I think was only because of the ties between Ethiopia's Emperor and the rulers of Spain.

Touchy, aren't we?
I've been on a couple of 757 flights and the planes were OLD. OLD OLD OLD. And not very nice.
I've heard they have newer ones. Hopefully the old ones will be sent to the scrapheap or sold or something.

Quoting AF022 (Reply 12):I've been on a couple of 757 flights and the planes were OLD. OLD OLD OLD. And not very nice.

Hehhehe ... The last two 757s I was on actually looked pretty good, fitted with light gray interiors. Of course, they still are from the late 80s/early 90s and don't have PTVs. Kinda like flying AA or US 757s.

I also wish to say that the old dark interiors of Ethiopian's fleet did not do justice to the aircraft.

= ET service is great. Significantly better than many Western carriers and probably on par with the second ring Asian carriers (KE, CI). Great cabin crew and renovations in ADD make it a good alternative transit point.

Quoting AF022 (Reply 12):I've been on a couple of 757 flights and the planes were OLD. OLD OLD OLD. And not very nice.
I've heard they have newer ones.

= I felt their 752s were better maintained than most Americans and some United.

Great to see new destinations for ET. Still no news on the much talked about ADD-ACC-NYC flight.
Surprised to see Dakar going daily at once.
Looks like all flights leaving ADD will end by midnight everyday.

Quoting Dkny (Reply 19):Great to see new destinations for ET. Still no news on the much talked about ADD-ACC-NYC flight.
Surprised to see Dakar going daily at once.
Looks like all flights leaving ADD will end by midnight everyday.

Yeah, ADD-ACC-NYC still not set for the near future. Thinking of that one, it would be of more benefit to West African pax, as opposed to those from the east since one can get to NYC much quickly by transiting at a European city. Or in the future, when/if ET goes nonstop to IAD.

Dakar also suprised me, since this is the biggest launch to any city for ET in terms of frequency. It is a milk-run route however, with 2 stops along the way (NDJ/BKO or LFW/ABJ), but what it does is link all of those francophone countries, and makes use of aircraft instead of having them sit around all night at BKO or ABJ. Come to think of it, these days, ABJ is risky. Would have loved to see nonstop BKO however, and a roundtrip daytime to NDJ. LFW could also be done roundtrip daytime, while ABJ is a bit of a stretch (ACC is currently the farthest city with a roundtrip daytime service: ie leave ADD in the morning after Asia/Europe arrivals, return to ADD in time for Asia/Europe departures).

Speaking of daytime roundtrips, ET has come a long way and well implemented this on most of its African routes. What this means is that aircraft would not go and hang around all night, an can be used on multiple flights. Remember the old days, where a 737 would get to DAR in mid afternoon, and not depart until 6AM the next day? What these roundtrips also do is allow for the same crew to leave and return to ADD on the same day. I was looking at the departure/arrival hours, and it does conform to the max 12 hr duty, 8 hour flying times set by the FAA under normal ops. Whether or not ET does it I do not know - DNKY/ET787, any way to find out whether the same set of crew operate outbound/inbound flights? There are also a few neat night time roundtrips, such as BEY, CAI, JED.

En plus, the late night bank will be more streamlined, as currently asian flights leave much later than the initial arrivals into ADD, as they have to wait for arriving flights from West Africa. With the new schedule, the latest in the bank leaves at 12:10 to JED, while the earliest arrivals are around 8:20PM. Gotta love that double daily to Dubai, with just 20 minutes in between. It's cool I guess, as if demand is low on a particular day, they could merge the two into one flight (they kinda do that now, by extending the second DXB flight to BOM on certain days).

It was nice seeing that ET signed up with Sabre for its passenger management system, which includes online booking, e-ticketing (time ticking on this one) and code-sharing (hmmm anything coming?). That announcement said that it was making such procurement ahead of a 5-year growth spurt, which has me wondering what else is in store! While I do not expect anything like the 20-something city list that Turkish Airlines announced in one shot, this would definitely have me drooling over schedules.